Here are earlier posts about Baltimore’s WCAO-AM.  As of 2021, it’s still on the air as “Heaven 600,” an iHeartMedia-owned urban gospel station.  It is simulcast on the HD2 channel of sister station WQSR-FM.

Source: Wikipedia

Here are other entries about Nashville’s WSIX.

WLAW went on the air from Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1937.  The publishers of the Lawrence Daily Eagle and Evening Tribune newspapers owned the station.  It opened a studio on Tremont Street in Boston in the early 1940s.   

WLAW-FM signed on in 1947.  In 1951, WLAW-AM/FM moved into new studios at the Hotel Bradford in Boston.  

In 1953, General Tire, owner of WNAC-AM, bought WLAW, which by that time was broadcasting at 50,000 watts on 680 kHz, the maximum allowed on an AM frequency.  It sold the weaker WNAC frequency and moved its call letters to the 680 frequency. 

WNAC tried a few different formats in the 1950s and 1960s, including middle-of-the-road music, Top 40 pop and a talk format.  In 1967, the owners flipped it to a Top 40 rock stations with new call letters: WRKO.  The gambit paid off and WRKO was among Boston’s most-listened-to stations in the 1970s.  Known as “The Big 68,” WKRO was home to well-known personalities. Here’s an aircheck from its heyday in 1976:

As music listeners migrated to FM in the late 1970s and early 1980s, WRKO’s audience disappeared.  It tried to adapt with a more adult contemporary format, but eventually flipped to the current all-talk format in 1981.  

The talk format was a success, attracting high ratings into the early 1990s.  After owner RKO General got into trouble with the FCC and lost most of its broadcast licenses, WRKO and sister FM station WROR were sold.  

As of 2017, Entercom owns WRKO-AM.  The WLAW call letters now belong to a Cumulus Media FM station in Newaygo, Michigan, serving the Muskegon market. 

Source: Wikipedia (WRKO)

Here are other entries about Pittsburgh’s KDKA-AM.

Here are other entries about San Antonio’s KABC-AM, today’s KKYX-AM.

Here are earlier entries about Baltimore’s WCAO-AM.

The Milwaukee Journal newspaper launched an experimental FM station in 1940.  W9XAO became W55M in 1942, broadcasting from a 50,000-watt transmitter in Richfield, Wisconsin.  The station aired classical music around the time.  

By the time of this ad in 1944, it received the call letters WMFM.  Later in the 1940s, it became WTMJ-FM, the FM sister of WTMJ-AM, and moved to 102.1 MHz.  

The owner became more focused on the launch of WTMJ-TV in 1947. There were very few FM receivers in those days and only a handful of listeners.  The Milwaukee Journal pulled the plug on WTMJ-FM in 1950.

The station returned to the air in 1959 at a new frequency – 94.5 MHz.  At some point, WTMJ-FM adopted an easy listening format.

In 1974, the station adopted a Top 40 format as WKTI-FM.  Here’s an aircheck of the switch:

The automated station, known as “I-94,” carried what it called “nonstop stereo rock.”  As FM listenership overtook AM stations in the late 1970s and early 1980s, WKTI-FM added live air personalities.  

By the early 1990s, WKTI evolved into a Hot Adult Contemporary format.  It adopted an Adult Top 40 format in 2005.

In 2008, the station flipped to an adult hits format, branded as “The New 94.5 Lake FM.”  A few days later, the call letters were changed to WLWK.  In 2010, it was rebranded as “94-5 The Lake.”

In 2015, WLWK flipped to a country format, reclaiming the WKTI call letters as “94.5 KTI Country.”  

As of 2017, E.W. Scripps Company owns WKTI, along with sister stations WTMJ-AM and WTMJ-TV.

Source: Wikipedia (WKTI)